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For anyone that is using Smart / Managed Switches what are you using to monitor them? I am looking for something using SNMP / RMON to monitor / track / report bandwidth and maybe even go further and track errors, uptime and unresponsive devices.

Of course since this is for my home / personal use I am looking for some thing that is cheap / free alternative to applications like What's Up Gold and PRTG which are great but certainly not free for the number of ports / devices I want to monitor. I know there is also MRTG but that seems to have fallen by the wayside.

I tried out Spice which is ok for telling you when something is down but doesn't track bandwidth usage.

For anyone that is using Smart / Managed Switches what are you using to monitor them? I am looking for something using SNMP / RMON to monitor / track / report bandwidth and maybe even go further and track errors, uptime and unresponsive devices.

Of course since this is for my home / personal use I am looking for some thing that is cheap / free alternative to applications like What's Up Gold and PRTG which are great but certainly not free for the number of ports / devices I want to monitor. I know there is also MRTG but that seems to have fallen by the wayside.

I tried out Spice which is ok for telling you when something is down but doesn't track bandwidth usage.

Any suggestions?

I don't know if it monitors switches themselves (either directly or via plugins) but have you looked at Nagios? Craploads of plugins, we used it to monitor our offsite locations at my previous place of employment. Can be a bit daunting to setup initially.

I don't know if it monitors switches themselves (either directly or via plugins) but have you looked at Nagios? Craploads of plugins, we used it to monitor our offsite locations at my previous place of employment. Can be a bit daunting to setup initially.

Thanks for the info, I've never heard of this before but this is far from Free. I picked the basic single server edition and it is $8k. I am looking for something for home / small business use.

I do not know if between that and the plugins you can accomplish what you are after, but we used it to monitor >1000 nodes (with the free version). They may have changed their pricing structure since then.

For anyone that is using Smart / Managed Switches what are you using to monitor them? I am looking for something using SNMP / RMON to monitor / track / report bandwidth and maybe even go further and track errors, uptime and unresponsive devices.

Of course since this is for my home / personal use I am looking for some thing that is cheap / free alternative to applications like What's Up Gold and PRTG which are great but certainly not free for the number of ports / devices I want to monitor. I know there is also MRTG but that seems to have fallen by the wayside.

I tried out Spice which is ok for telling you when something is down but doesn't track bandwidth usage.

Any suggestions?

Cacti is free and does an excellent job with statistical reporting.
Nagios, the free version, is outstanding as well and can be used for your uptime reporting, monitoring, and alerting.

I do not know if between that and the plugins you can accomplish what you are after, but we used it to monitor >1000 nodes (with the free version). They may have changed their pricing structure since then.

HTH
Scott

We use the free version across 4 datacenters and two continents to monitor around 3500 services. It's a really fantastic tool that puts many paid for monitoring softwares to shame.